


Past/Present/Always

by crescentmoontea



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ash Lynx Lives, Healing, Hope, M/M, PTSD, Past Sexual Abuse, Trauma, please see author's note for a more detailed content warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29071311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescentmoontea/pseuds/crescentmoontea
Summary: He is healing, but healing isn’t linear, and memories don’t fade in stripes like book-spines in a window’s sun.//Ash reflects on where he is, his relationship, and what it means to heal from what he lived through. Set several years post-anime canon in an AU where Ash lives.
Relationships: Ash Lynx/Okumura Eiji
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	Past/Present/Always

**Author's Note:**

> I finished watching Banana Fish recently and wrote this to cope. 
> 
> Content warning: this fic is rated M due to its discussion of Ash's canonical sexual trauma/PTSD, as well as how he grapples with experiencing sexual desire in his relationship with Eiji. His abuse is not graphically depicted, but the lingering effects of his PTSD are described. The fic's focus is ultimately on his progress and his hope, but does not shy away from his struggles. Additionally, the fic is set during the initiation of a consensual, wanted sexual encounter, but the encounter itself is not described. Please exercise caution if this sounds like it could be distressing for you to read.

“Are you with me?” Eiji asks.

Ash is, tonight. They’re tangled up together on the bed, Ash propped up on his elbows and Eiji kneeling between Ash’s legs. Eiji’s eyes are all he sees, Eiji’s body on his is all he feels, and in their glass-box home, they are untouchable. They can soar like birds into the Tokyo sunset, ride the waxing waves of gold and pink into tomorrows that no one else will ever see, ever feel, ever share. 

But Eiji always asks, because sometimes Ash isn’t, not completely. Sometimes he wants to be but can’t, and those sorts of _sometimes_ can hit without warning, even after all this time. Sometimes he slips out of his body, ends up pinned to the ceiling before he realizes what’s happening, watches himself start dancing like a marionette: old memories perched on his shoulders, pulling his strings. It’s tired choreography for torn-down sets, it’s new wisps of old screams bitten into his lips, and whenever it starts, Eiji stops, holds him still and strokes his hair until he comes back down, comes back inside. 

Other times it’s the opposite. Other times Ash’s body is wracked with phantom pain, and instead of escaping, he burrows deep into his own bones and curls up, waits in the felted plush of his marrow for the throes to pass. The sensations are real but the injuries are echoes, muted, muffled; more like pressing his thumb on an old bruise than having a fresh one punched into his thigh. Eiji waits those out with him, too, ever bright, ever steady, voice braided like a rope for Ash to climb as he makes his way back out. 

Sometimes it’s Eiji who isn’t himself, but when that happens, it sure as hell isn't about the absence of love. Eiji’s love for Ash is transparent, messy, drips from his words and splashes out of his gazes every single day. He’s the one person Ash has always trusted, the one truth he’s never questioned. But so many others took Ash before he took himself back, and even now, they won’t stop coming back as ghosts. Each time they visit, they hate what they find; it makes them so mad, to see Ash in love, rebelling against their claims to his body and mind. When Ash won’t look at them, they try to possess Eiji, try to wrench all the love they despise from his eyes, try to scrape up his windpipe so his voice will sound like theirs used to, glacier-cold and dagger-sharp. They can’t fool Ash, and he always fights back, but his ghosts fight dirty before they go down. They crunch stolen relics while he blinks away their facades, slice his tongue with the jagged shards as he shouts their encores silent. 

Ash has been haunted for most of his life, but it wasn’t like this when the world moved faster, when everything was dangerous and surviving took damn near all of his time. But it’s different now. Things are slower, and they’re safer, but that also means there’s space for his feelings to show up in ways they never used to. And his feelings are strong: they can rip him apart when they don’t agree, when one starts craving something another fears. Sometimes his thoughts will whisper _Eiji, Eiji, Eiji_ while his body is ten years backwards in time, trapped in someone else’s grip, held at someone else’s mercy -- and the shame that floods his veins from the clash is enough to nearly drown him. It’s heavy with grief for what he should’ve learned but didn’t, stained with rage against what he was taught instead. In those moments, it both is and isn’t enough to want, and the bridge over the dissonance sometimes buckles under his weight. The first time Ash thought he was ready for sex on his own terms, he wasn’t; the first time Eiji made him come, he cried, because it was the first time someone made him come because they wanted him to feel good. 

Ash has gotten better at recognizing how _ready_ actually feels, but it’s still an ongoing process. He counters the shame when it finds him, tells it that seeking pleasure for his own body doesn’t make him a monster, that what was done to him and what he and Eiji do together aren’t equivalent. He’s learning how to embrace what he wants -- and that what he wants and what he can handle aren’t always the same thing. He is healing, but healing isn’t linear, and memories don’t fade in stripes like book-spines in a window’s sun. They fade in awkward patches, get dusty, go blurry; their colors change and their contrast heightens as they warp. The darkest parts always fade last, lingering long after the glimmers of hope are bleached into their spectral outlines. 

But they _are_ fading. He can’t deny that. 

It makes him kind of uneasy, but kind of proud, too. 

Ash thinks the ghosts can tell he’s changing. He’s certain they sense how he’s starting to see himself like Eiji does, not as a lynx or a devil but a person, certain he can feel their anger boiling as he slowly bleeds their power from his past. It’s why they’re so desperate to trick him, and sometimes, it’s why their tricks still work. But Ash can see their desperation for what it is: weakness. He knows that his ghosts can’t be killed, not completely, but he’s watching them splinter, watching them go wafer-thin with age. And he knows that for as long as they can still speak, the man at his side will never follow their orders, never rush him or push him or try to control him. Eiji told Ash once that he’d wait for him forever, and he meant it, still means it, will mean it for as long as their souls are bound together, knows Ash means his own promises in kind--

“Aslan?” Eiji asks again. 

His hand is bathing Ash’s jaw in warmth, thumb stroking his cheek as he waits for an answer. It’s nothing like when Ash’s captors used to grab him by the chin and force him to look into their soulless eyes. It’s loving, and it’s wanted, and tonight, every side of Ash is nowhere but within it. He feels the foundation he’s built with Eiji holding steady under his feet, feels the scarred wings of his freedom spreading out from between his shoulder blades. His body and mind are still learning what his heart and soul already know, but tonight, he feels whole. It’s a feeling he doesn’t take for granted, a feeling he treasures -- a feeling he deserves, Eiji always reminds him, and as he looks at Eiji now, he reminds himself, too. 

“I’m with you,” Ash says, and Eiji smiles, scatters a fresh glimmer of light over Ash’s vision.

“I’m with you, too,” he murmurs into Ash’s mouth, a quiet vow that expands inside his chest as it settles. “Forever.” 

It’s a beautiful word, their _forever_ : a promise that’s already been kept, a future that’s already opened its doors. It’s everything Eiji and Ash have meant to each other since the day they met, everything they carry everywhere they go. It’s Eiji vaulting over the wire-capped wall, and it’s Ash at ease in front of Eiji’s camera; theirs alone. Ash feels its perpetuity in his pulse, its fidelity in his heartbeat, its determination in his breath. He pulls Eiji closer and rolls them over, repeats the oath: sings it like a hymn into Eiji’s ear and dots it down the slope of his neck, shades its shadow into the pockets of his collarbones and strums it low from the strings of his ribs. 

“ _Aslan_ ,” Eiji says again, softly, bewitchingly; Ash swears his name has never sounded better.


End file.
